136 PAST AND PRESENT

THREE MIDLAND TOWNS NORTHAMPTON, LEICESTER, NOTTINGHAM

DURING the past thirty .or forty years the study of local history in this country has developed very greatly both in scale and in scope, and much has been done to raise the standard of work in it. Among the societies that have laboured to bring this ab_out none has played a more distinguished part than this one; just as, among individual students and scholars, nobody has worked harder or more effectively than this Society's retiring Secretary, Miss Wake; As a result of the work done up and down the country during these years, local history has ceased to be a merely antiquarian study and has begun to become something much broader. One of its most important objectives is now seen to be the investigation of the establishment, the development, and sometimes the decline of communities. Since local history is like charity and begins at home, it is natural and proper that most people who have written well in this field have concentrated their attention on one community, town, or district, at a time. But there is another exercise, also profitable to pursue-the com­ parative examination of communities; and it is a small COntribution to this study that I am offering you this afternoon. I want to look at three notable towns of the , lying within a span of sixty miles in a straight line, showing some characteristics in common and some very marked dissimilarities. They stand in a different relationship to one another at various times, one now moving forward while another stands still or goes back-until we come to the point at which we see them with our own eyes today. They are different, quite obviously, in size, in physical appearance, in feeling, if that is not a fanciful term. Yet all three of them belong, as they have belonged for -centuries past, to what I may call the same family among English towns: a family that is different-you can see what I mean at once-from that of Salisbury or Cheltenham or Hull. May I say at the outset that I do not propose to pontificate to you about Northampton? I have no claims to make that attempt, even if I wished to. Rather I want to take Northampton as a point of reference-much more familiar to you than to me-and to look at those two northern neighbours by comparison with it and with each other. I do not pretend to tell the whole story. I am trying only to select some of the most striking and interesting points in it. If we look back first to origins, one difference stands out immediately. Leicester was a Roman town, the only important one in a huge tract of the Midlands bounded by Lincoln, Chester, and Cirencester: a substantial place, at least down to the ninth century far more sub­ stantial that either of its fellows. It belongs to a very small company among the great industrial towns of today, along with London, Manchester, and Newcastle. All three of these Midland towns became important during and after the Danish invasions and emerged before the Norman Conquest as the unquestioned capitals of their shires. Two of them, Nottingham and Northampton, developed the curious structure of "double boroughs". At Nottingham you can see that structure plainly in an hour's walk over the two hills of the old town: from St. Mary's church on the east, the site of the Saxon settlement, down to the old market place and up to the Castle, built by the Normans-as Camden put it, "to bridle the English". The market place, in the saddle between the two hills, was the meeting-point of the two divisions of the town, populated at first by c_onquered and conquerors. They kept themselves separate. Different laws of inheritance obtained: in the eastern town the custom was "Borough English"-the old Anglo-Saxon rule of descent to the youngest son; in the western the Norman rule that we still follow, of descent to the eldest, prevailed. The two divisions continued to have separate juries at quarter sessions until the end of the seventeenth century, and there were two sheriffs and two coroners down to the municipal reform of 1835. - Leicester, on the other hand, was always one town. True, the Conqueror placed his castle on a site that had not, so far as we know, been used before, south of the river-crossing, whilst the Roman town had lain north of it. But the Roman plan still influenced the development of THREE MIDLAND TOWNS 137

Leicester after the Conquest. There emerged here, as at Northampton-and elsewhere, as at Gloucester and Oxford-a main street plan that was cruciform. But the difference, as you see the towns today, is that Northampton has retained that plan in full force, whereas at Leicester it has been obscured by the shift of the town centre in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries a quarter of a mile to the east. The modern town centre, marked by the Clock Tower of 1868, stands on the site of the old East Gate. You can still discern the old plan very clearly, however, if you look at the junction of High Street and Highcross Street; and close to this point you can see a cross of granite setts laid into the tarmac of Highcross Street, marking the site of the medieval High Cross itself. At Northampton and Leicester, too, the market place has suffered a different fate from that of Nottingham. All three had great markets-and Northampton and Nottingham enjoyed fairs as well that were of national importance. At Northampton and Leicester the old market place has survived, in a physical relationship to the town centres that is similar. Both flourish there to this day. Long may they continue! (At Leicester, as you may have heard, we nearly lost our market place a year or two ago to a parcel of "developers"; but we now have the prospect not only of retaining it but of having it greatly improved, in convenience and appearance alike, as a result of an intelligent piece of modern town-planning.) So here with you, as with us in Leicester, the long continuity of retail trade is preserved, and the markets continue to be held, on the traditional days, as they have been for seven hundred years past. At Nottingham the old market place went in the 1920s, to make way for a dully imposing civic square; though it must be agreed that modern traffic had rendered the old site impracticable to maintain. What sort of trade was carried on in these towns in the Middle Ages? We know less of the answer to that question than we should like to, though the street names of Nottingham give us many useful hints: as you move westwards down the hill from St. Mary's church you will still come upon Bridlesmith Gate, Carter Gate, Fletcher Gate, Wheeler Gate, and half-a-dozen more of the same kind. By the fourteenth century Nottingham was becoming an important entrepot for coal, mined in the pits close by at WOllaton and Strelley and then put on to the Trent. Coal had always to be imported from a distance to Northamptop. and Leicester-which helps to account for their different atmosphere, in the literal sense of the word. By the end of the Middle Ages Northampton has emerged as a town of shoemakers: more than twice as many were recorded in 1524 as of any other trade. At Leicester and Nottingham at the same time the predominance lay rather with butchers and tanners. In the late fifteenth century Leicester and Nort~ampton were for a time very closely linked. They seem even to have acted together to secure legislation concerning their government in 1489. The constitutions then established were closely similar for the two towns and remained so throughout the history of the old unreformed corporations. There is some reason to believe that at this time Leicester was, in population, the largest town of the three. Certainly in 1524 the number of taxpayers was larger by one third in Leicester than in Nottingham;1 but if this was so, its position was rapidly deteriorating. It must have felt severely the disuse into which its castle fell, as a centre of provincial administration, du~ing the fifteenth century. The town certainly seems to have been in a state of economic decay, masked though that may be for us by the deceptively splendid career of William Wigston the younger. The Reformation made a greater impact upon Leicester than upon either of the other towns we are considering. It boasted two important religious houses, the Abbey and the College of the Newarke. The dissolution of these two, as well as of tht! minor religious foundations in the town, produced a great social upheaval there: perhaps one in eight of the whole population had to change their jobs or find new masters. The steady, assured employment arising from these two great institutions, and the business they indirectly brought into the town, had gone for ever. . As far as belief went, all three. towns developed a strong character of Nonconformity­ Northampton perhaps most strongly of all. It is worth noting, too, that this happened in Leicester under aristocratic patronage, that of the Irastings family, and especially the 3rd Earl of Hunt­ ingdon in Elizabeth's reign. There were great religious dissensions in the town in the early

1 Transactions of the Leicestershire Archaeological Society, xxv (1949), 94. 138 NORTHAMPTONSHIRE PAST AND PRESENT

seventeenth century, with the corporation generally supporting the Dissenters, openly or in secret. It was a divided, rather bitter, unprosperous little community; and then it was hit a fierce blow by the Civil War. In 1645 Leicester suffered two sieges in quick succession, with disastrous results. "An old and ragged city", Evelyn called it when he saw it in 1654; and the marks of the battering it had received were not obliterated for generations to come. Not long afterwards, it is true, Northampton was visited by an even more dreadful calamity, the fire of 1675. But prompt measures were taken for the rebuilding of the town, and the result, at least as far as the appearance of the main streets and the centre of the town was concerned, was most impressive. It was even referred to as an example to others. York, for example, was admonished that "it must have a purgation by fire· if ever it arise in beauty like Northampton or London".2 Let us take a look for a moment at these three towns as the observant Thomas Baskerville (who made that remark) saw them, on his travels through in the 1670s and 1680s: "Being come within 2 miles of Northampton, we had a fair prospect of the town seated by a river, on ground gently rising on the other side the stream, to which the way leads over a stone bridge. And about a mile on the right hand in another road stands a fair cross with the effigies of some kings and queens cut in stone work. The town seems to be not much less than Oxford, having fair streets and strong built houses of free stone of an ochre colour in many places, with fair inns and very spacious market place. It hath likewise to adorn it four churches, viz:- St. Peter's, St. Sepulchre's, Allhallows, and St. Giles'; and at the end of the town which leads towards Daintree an old castle. This town some years since this journey hath suffered under a dreadful conflagration, 3 parts or more of it being totally ruined by that furious element, but 'tis since, Phoenix like, risen out of her ashes in a far more noble and beauteous form, the houses of the streets being now built in very good order with excellent freestone and 'bellconies', and some of the inns are such gallant and stately structures the like is scarcely elsewhere to be seen". "As to Leicester, accounted 12 miles from Harborough, it is now an old stinking town, situated upon a dull river, inhabited for the most part by tradesmen, viz: worsted combers and clothiers, for the streets being then a sweeping and cleansing against the judges coming in the next morning the stinking puddles of [dung] and water being then stirred, made me go spewing through all the streets as I went to see it, yet it hath formerly been a town of good remark, for here is an ancient house or palace called the Duke of Lancaster's palace [i.e. the castle], as also a large hospital built by some of those dukes [Trinity Hospital], and an old piece of building which they call Janus' temple [? the Jewry Wall]. Here is also a bridge over the river which they call Richard the 3rd's bridge, by which some say he was buried, and out of the town they go over this bridge to Bosworth field, where he was slain. Here are in the town five churches, of which three as I remember have handsome spires, and are to be seen a good distance from the town". At Nottingham it was a very different story: "To give you a little character of Nottingham, it may be called, as a man may say, paradise restored, for here you find large streets, fair built houses, fine women, and many coaches rattling about, and their shops full of all merchantable riches. As to the situation of it, it is upon a pleasant rock of freestone in which everyone that will may have cellars, and that without the trouble of springs or moisture, so that excepting Bridgnorth in Shropshire you cannot find such another town in England. It is divided into the upper and lower towns, for when you have a mind to leave the large and more spacious parts of this town on the plain of the hill and will go down to the lower streets near the river, you must descend down right many stairs ere you get to the bottom, and here you find as it were another town full of shops and people who have a convenience to cut in the rock warehouses, stables, or what rooms else they please for their own peculiar uses. This town hath in the upper part of it a large and long market place. "For public buildings here are four pillars with many stairs to ascend each of them, and 3 churches one of them bigger than the rest, in which they are now putting up an organ, ann: 1675; but that which will yet add a greater beauty and ornament to this town is the Duke of Newcastle's now building a sumptuous house in the ruins of old Nottingham Castle whose walls were demolished by the Parliamentarian and Oliverian people. This house is seated on a rock

2 Hfst. MSS. Comm. Portland, ii. 311-2. THREE MIDLAND TOWNS 139

extending itself towards the river so far as the land will permit, where such as have a mind from this high precipice may tumble headlong into the river Trent many yards beneath it. They have got up this building as high as the first storey, having in it a noble staircase, each stair being made of one large entire stone, brought hither from Mansfield, carried up as to form in a large square without any pillars to support it, each stair geometrically depending one upon another". 3 It is just at this point that Leicester began to undergo an economic revolution. In the reign of Charles II we first hear of a hosier in the town, mentioned by his remarkable name: Abstinence Pougher. He was the harbinger of what became a great industry in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries-though not, until well after 1850, an industry based on factories or steam power. In that it resembled Northampton's famous trade of shoemaking. ("This town stands on other men's legs", wrote Fuller in 1662.) One point here is perhaps particularly worth noting: the strong stimulus given to the manufacture in wartime, very clearly traceable in the eighteenth century, and the recession that followed in the years of peace. The population- of all three towns was now rising. By this time Nottingham seemed to be clearly established as the largest of them. In 1740 it had about 10,000 people, and nearly three times as many at the first national census in 1801. There was also a count taken in Northampton in the 1740s, which showed about half as many people as there were in Nottingham; by 1801 it had only a quarter of Nottingham's population. Leicester came about half way between the other two. Then the two smaller towns moved ahead very rapidly. Northampton and Leicester both trebled their populations in the first forty years of the nineteenth century, while Nottingham's increased by less than half. Indeed at the censuses of 1841, 1851, and 1871 Leicester was the largest town of the three. But thereafter Nottingham regained its lead, and it has kept it ever since. Among the reasons for this irregular growth; one is especially interesting. In Northampton and in Leicester a gradual expansion of the built-up area was achieved without any serious diffi­ culty. In Northampton a large part of the old common fields of the town was enclosed under an Act of 1778. The same thing was done in Leicester, quite smoothly, a few years later. Before the end of the eighteenth century Leicester had begun its expansion south-eastwards on to the rising ground above the river; and in the early nineteenth century, with the enclosure of the South Fields, building could begin along the line of the Welford Road and the side streets thrown off it. In Nottingham the case was very different. There the old town was closely hemmed in by two different kinds of property: three private estates and the town fields, in the possession of the freemen. One of the estates was the Duke of Newcastle's, adjoining the Castle rock to the west and north: an estate that successive Dukes developed very slowly, as a handsome piece of town­ planning, in the course of the nineteenth century. As early as 1787 the freemen were being urged to enclose the town fields, and a borough election was fought in that year on this issue. The opponents of enclosure won. As long as the private owners and the freemen maintained their refusal to sell any of the land under their control, the only new building that was practicable was within the old town and on a few small and unhealthy streets along the marshes, southwards towards the Trent. It was not until 1845, after endless bitter battles, that the freemen at last agreed to enclosure. Meanwhile, and largely as a consequence of this argument and delay, Nottingham had come to be distinguished by some of the most atrocious slums in the . They were far worse than anything,in Leicester or Northampton. In the great cholera epidemic of 1832, there were 330 deaths in Nottingham. In the early forties the death-rate in one of the wards of the town had risen to 31 per 1,000, and the expectation of life had fallen to 18 years. In the same ward 44 per cent. of all the children born died before the age of four.4 No wonder that Nottingham became a centre of the most militant Chartism, returning Fergus O'Connor to Parliament in 1847. By contrast Northampton and "Radical Leicester" favoured a gradualist policy of change by constitutional means. In all three towns political radicalism went hand in hand with religious Nonconformity; but it was in Nottingham that tempers were most dangerously inflamed.

s Ibid., 289, 308-9. 4 J. D. Chambers, Modern Nottiugham in the Making (1945), 12. 140 ' NORTHAMPTONSHIRE PAST AND PRESENT

It must, however, be said to Nottingham's credit that when reform came it was put through most intelligently. With the passing of the Enclosure Act 1,100 acres of land were immediately made available for building. Of these 130 were at once set aside for recreation-one of the earliest instances of such provision in England. As new building came to be undertaken it was subjected to careful and salutary regulation. If the slums were not abolished overnight­ some very bad ones survived in Nottingham well into the twentieth century-from this time for­ ward a steady fight was waged against them and in the long run it was effective. Let us look at one other contrast between these towns in the nineteenth century: a contrast in transport. In an age when water transport predominated, all the advantages lay with Nottingham, lying close to the Trent a broad highway of national importance. In the Railway Age things worked out differently. There Leicester had the advantage over the other two towns. I do not need to remind you here of the difficulties met by Northampton when it was by-passed by the great main line to Birmingham and the North; nor of the causes of this misfortune, which were first stated rightly by Miss Wake. 5 The damage was in part repaired with the opening of the loop line from Roade to Rugby in 1882; but it was really irretrievable. What is less often realised is that something not dissimilar happened also to Nottingham. True, it got a railway from London (the Midland Counties line, branching out of the London & Birmingham Railway at Rugby) at the same time as Leicester, in 1840. But that line was in the shape of a Y, the right-hand arm leading to Nottingham, the left-hand arm to Derby; and Derby was the vital junction, carrying the railway on to Leeds and York. In effect, therefore, Nottingham found itself on a branch of the Midland Railway; and presently it was placed on another branch leading off the main Great Northern line to the east, at Grantham. Like Northampton, it too was eventually given a loop line of its own, in 1880; and since then the service between St. Pancras and the North has been divided between the old main line and the new loop through Nottingham. But the old line has always been better served; and the gainer has been Leicester. No town could be more conveniently placed: almost equidistant from London, Manchester, and Leeds. Enjoying easy main-line com­ munication with all three, a line of its own to Birmingham and another one across into the eastern counties, there is no better railway centre in England. If one looks at Leieester and Nottingham together in the late nineteenth century and the early twentieth, one very marked difference between the economic and social structure of the two towns appears. In Nottingham, things developed on a large scale, with great, nationally famous, businesses like Booes and Player's and Raleigh bicycles. Leicester has never had any single firm on the scale of these. For a century past it has been a prosperous town, not in the sense that it has produced millionaires, but from the high average income of its whole population. It has diversified its industries, developing the manufacture of boots and shoes (at first a little at the expense of Northampton) from the 1850s onwards, and more recently light engineering. It has always been able, in a high degree, to employ women equally with men. The consequences of this relatively even spread of wealth are written all over the town today. It has certainly had its effect, and that a marked one, on the character and outlook of the people who live in it. Here, then, are three towns with similar, and yet different, histories. All three bear the marks of their past plainly enough: Nottingham with its two hills, its castle, and its twentieth­ century civic grandeur; Leicester, more reticent, even secret, its antiquity overlaid with modern industrial prosperity, though not altogether destroyed by it; Northampton, still compact, most clearly of the three an historic town, with its splendid site as you see it coming in from the south, -and with All Saints church still at the very centre of its traffic, a splendid monument of the fire of 1675. May I add one other thing? Thes'e three are among the small number of English towns that have taken notable pains with the publication of their records. All three have produced citizens with a pride in their past history and an admirable care for preserving the written evidence of it. J. SIMMONS.

5 In Northampton Vindicated~· or why the Main Line missed the Town (1935). 141

SMALL STONE HOUSES IN NORTHAMPTONSHIRE

NORTHAMPTONSHIRE is justly famed for its Great Houses, but its vernacular buildings have received comparatively little attention. Much of the charm of its villages derives from the farm­ houses and cottages built of local stone and testifying to the skill of mason, carpenter and thatcher. This article is an attempt, however, not to deal merely with the picturesque aspect of small local buildings, but to show how they can be studied in such a way as to contribute to an understanding of the history of Northamptonshire. Vernacular buildings are now increasingly attracting the attention of the architectural and social historian, and the appearance of Mr. M. W. Barley's recent book on The English Farmhouse and Cottage (Routledge 1961) is a landmark in the.study of the subject. Even so, much remains to be done, especially perhaps in recording vernacular buildings on a regional basis. Few local historians can hope to emulate the skill and thoroughness of the pioneer study by Sir Cyril Fox and Lord Raglan in their Monmouthshire Houses (Three volumes, National Museum of Wales, 1951-1954),. but there is certainly no better guide to the techniques needed in recording vernacular buildings. This short article is merely an introduction to a very large subject. Stone is not of course the only building material used for small houses and cottages in Northamptonshire: timber­ framed buildings are to be found in the County, and also buildings with walls of solid mud, a number of which survive mainly in the north-western part of the County; there are also some early brick buildings. But stone is the characteristic material used for most of the older houses which now remain. Northamptonshire of course lies on the Stone Belt, and has plentiful supplies of good building stone. The stone varies from near-white limestone to dark brown or purple ironstone, with a whole range of greys, yellows and light and medium browns in between. In general terms, the northern and eastern half of the County has buildings mainly of grey limestone, while the western and southern half has buildings of brown ironstone or ferruginous limestone. Where the two main types of stone meet, one finds a pleasing use of the different-coloured stone for decorative effect: usually the main walls are of brown stone, with limestone window mullions, roof copings and chimneys. Occasionally one comes across limestone buildings with ironstone quoins and sometimes different shades of brown stone are used for decorative effect. There are excellent examples of the use of different coloured stone in most of the villages running due south from Rockingham to Irthlingborough: a good 17th Century example at Broughton is illustrated in Plate I and an 18th Century example from the village of Old in Plate lI. How is one to attempt to classify the very large number of small stone houses which still survive? Until a very detailed study has taken place, it would be foolhardy to attempt any rigid classification and all that can be attempted here is to give a number of suggestions which have occurred to the present write~ since he began to study the vernacular buildings particularly of the northern half of the County a few years ago. I have not found in the Northamptonshire Stone Belt any houses which precisely correspond to the crock buildings discovered by Fox and Raglan in Monmouthshire or=- by Mr. V. R. Webster in Leicestershire (see Transactions of the Leicestershire Archaeological Society, Vol. XXX 1954). It is clear that the crock frames described by these authors were not originally built in association with the stone or brick walls which now usually encase them. But there are or were in Northamptonshire a number of houses with crocks which appear to be contemporary' with the stone walls which in fact support them. There are never any signs of crucks in the end walls of these houses-in fact the end walls act as supports for the ridge-pieces and purlins Three such Northamptonshire houses are described by Dr. R. B. Wood-Jones in his study of the Banbury Region (printed in the Transactions of the Ancient Monuments Society, Vol. IV 1956). Two of the three are at King's Sutton and the third is at Chacombe, and all three show remarkable 142 NORTHAMPTONSHIRE PAST AND PRESENT affinities with 'raised cruck' barns of 14th Century date in North Oxfordshire. The two houses at King's Sutton have cruck blades which are embedded in the side walls about eight feet above ground floor level. The house at Chacombe has two pairs of crucks built into the thick rubble walls and only the insertion of a modern bay has revealed the foot of one blade 18 inches above ground floor level. Whether the crucks at Chacombe were originally free-standing with a different walling material, or whether they were built in conjunction with the heavy stone walls is, says Dr. Wood-Jones, a matter for conjecture. It seems clear, however, that the stone walls in the two houses at King's Sutton are con­ temporary with the crucks, and that also is my opinion about the five raised cruck houses which I have come across in the northern half of the County, viz. at Brigstock, King's Cliffe, Gretton, and . The crucks at Brigstock are deeply embedded in the side walls and spring from a point three feet above ground level (see Fig. 4A). The blades at Brigstock differ from those in the other four cruck houses in that they are buried much more deeply into the side walls and are only six to seven inches wide along their whole length. The pairs of crucks in all five houses are joined by a collar at a point roughly equidistant between the top of the side walls and the apex of the roof and they are all joined at the top by short s'addles. There are no tie-beams and the purlins rest on extensions of the collars. In two cases the existing bedroom floors are certainly later insertions and in three the blackening of the cruck timbers indicates that originally there was in each case a central hearth with smoke rising to the roof. To sum up my conclusions about these five cruck houses, I think that certainly in three and possibly in four of them the original house was open to the roof and as such may be regarded as of medieval character. But they differ from the Monmouthshire and Leicestershire examples in that the stone walls and the cruck blades appear to be contemporary. They may thus be regarded as either survivals of a type of house which was perhaps widespread in medieval times in areas where stone was plentiful, or as representatives of an intermediate type forming a transition between the timber-framed houses of the medieval period and the stone houses of the modern period. On the whole it seems plain that the cruck frame tradition was adapted to stone building in the Middle Ages. Turning now to the post-medieval period, the growing influence of the Renaissance is clearly discernible in many details of treatment. One outstanding stylistic feature of 17th century vernacular buildings may be mentioned here. The use of ovolo-mullioned windows is widespread, particularly in the northern half of the County. The range of date is also wide, from the late sixteenth to the mid-eighteenth centuries. The earliest and latest dated houses with ovolo mullions which I have noted are Thorpe by Water (which is just over the border in Rutland) 1597 and Braybrooke 1741. In the south of the County and among the brown stone houses the ovolo mullion seems to be much less common: the typical 17th century window mullion is merely chamfered. Rarer still, though I have noted a few examples, are ogee-moulded and hollow-chamfered mullions. After about 1700 classical detail predominates: the, four-centred arches of doors and fireplaces give place to flat arches, and the stone-mullioned windows to sash. Elevations become regular, and individual drip-stones over 'windows become continuous bands serving a mainly decorative purpose (see Plates 11 and Ill). Mouldings on stone chimneys become plainer, though the characteristic Northamptonshire stone chimneys continue to be built well into the 18th century. So much may be gathered from an external examination of the buildings. But much more may be learnt from an internal examination. Plans and sections are essential, and until many more have been drawn it is impossible to make any valid generalisations about house plans. There is also the difficulty that many houses are the result of piecemeal building so that the original plan cannot always be reconstructed. To recapture an original plan much detective work is needed, though at the same time this provides one of the main fascinations in examining old houses. In spite of all these limitations, however, it is possible to classify many of the existing houses into certain broad categories, based mainly on the number of original ground-floor rooms. First we consider houses with only one ground floor room. These are not at all common. Frequently one finds that what appears to be a simple one-roomed house is in fact a fragment of a larger house which has been partially demolished. I have come across 18th century houses SMALL STONE HOUSES IN NORTHAMPTONSHIRE 143

PLATE I. BROUGHTON Ironstone house with limestone ovoIo-mullioned windows

PLATE I I. OLD Ironstone house with limestone details. Gables dated 1759 and 1760 144 NORTHAMPTONSHIRE PAST AND PRESENT

PLATE Ill. WELDON Limestone house dated 1654 with the initials of Arthur Grumbold, mason. The door on the left leads into a cross passage

PLATE IV. COTTlNGHAM Row of nineteenth century cottages showing the use of old and new building materials­ limestone and ironstone rubble with brick and slate. There is a blocked door behind the traffic sign SMALL STONE HOUSES IN NORTHAMPTONSHIRE 145

PLATE V. KING'S CLIFFE Seventeenth century limestone house jettied out in imitation of timber framing

PLATE VI. CORBY Semi-detached cottages with central chimney stack. Limestone rubble walls and Collyweston slate roof 146 NORTHAMPTONSHIRE PAST AND PRESENT

PLATE VII. OUNDLE Clasped purlin roof of house dated 1650 No. 61 West Street, now demolished

PLATE VIII. ROTHWELL Butt purlin roof of house dated 1782 in Church Lane, now demolished

Box FRAME ROOF TYPES SMALL STONE HOUSES IN NORTHAMPTONSHIRE 147

with one room only downstairs at Gretton and at Weldon, and a 17th· century example from Upper is illustrated in Figure I. When the need for single-room accommodation became pressing, one finds two developments taking place. On the one hand, there are the rows of almshouses mainly of late 17th century date (as at Kettering 1688 and King's Cliffe 1668) which perhaps became the model for the rows of cottages providing one room up and one down for labourers and their families which are such a marked feature of 19th century building (see for example Plate IV, cottages at Cottingham). On the other hand, one finds numerous examples of larger houses of 17th and 18th century date which were converted in the 19th century to one­ or two-roomed tenements for agricultural or industrial workers. To the 19th century also belongs the frequent conversion of barns into tenements. Houses with two original ground-floor rooms comprise a very numerous class which may be sub-divided as follows:- (a) Those with a central chimney stack serving one or both rooms. This is a common arrangement. An outstanding example is Haunt Hill House at Weldon dated 1643 which is the subject of a recent study by H. M. Colvin in Studies in Building History (edt. E. M. Jope 1961). An unusual example from King's Cliffe is illustrated on Plate V. Here there seems to have been an attempt to imitate in stone the type of jettied-out wings normally associated with timber-framed houses. It may not be fanciful to see in these central-stack houses the origin of the later semi-detached cottages, where two families share a joint chimney stack, as in the example from Corby on Plate VI. (b) Those with a fire place at either one or both ends, and a simple wall dividing the two rooms. Frequently one finds that one fireplace is original and a second fireplace on the opposite end wall has been inserted later. Most of the 17th century examples I have noted have original entrances at the end adjoining the fireplace, but most later examples have central or near­ central doorways, as in the 1746 house at Stoke Albany illustrated in Figure 2. (c) Those with fireplaces on the end walls, but with central passage or staircase. In all the cases I have noted there is a central doorway. Sometimes this opens on to a cross-passage with a door at the end of it into the garden at the back. Sometimes on ent~ring one finds the stairs immediately in front, though frequently such stairs are later insertions, and a blocked door in the wall opposite the front door indicates that originally there was a through passage. We now consider houses with three ground floor rooms. These may be divided into two broad categories, viz. those with and those without a cross-passage. Three-roomed houses with cross passages are very common, and belong mainly to the 17th century. One example from King's Cliffe is shown in Figure 3 and a more sophisticated example from Weldon is illustrated on Plate Ill. The cross passage divides the service end of the house from the living quarters and in the majority of cases the Hall fireplace backs on to the passage. There is however a large minority of cross-passage houses where a central chimney serves both the Hall and Parlour. As for houses with three ground floor rooms without cross passages, there is considerable variety in the dis­ position of the doors and fireplaces. Where however the two principal rooms share a chimney stack, the original door usually opens on to the butt end of the chimney breast, as in the two­ roomed plan with central stack. In other cases the main door lies between the service room and the Hall, as in cross passage houses. There are other types of ground floor plans which do not readily fall into any of the above categories, but many more plans are needed before any generalisations can be made about them. One variation is the L-shaped house, where the wing is not an earlier survival or a later addition but an integral feature, as in the hOllse at Broughton illustrated on Plate 1. Much useful information can also be gathered from . a study of roof structures, and for this purpose I have adopted the nomenclature used by Dr. R. A. Cordingley in his article on "British Historical Roof Types" printed in the Transactions of the Andent Monuments Sodety, . Vol. IX 1961. Northamptonshire lies in the Intermediate Zone with regard to the roof structures of its vernacular buildings, that is, there is a mixture of the two main carpentry traditions, the Lowland Box Frame tradition and the Highland Cruck Frame tradition. My own experience to date has indicated that the Cruck Frame tradition predominates, at any rate in the northern half of the County. The typical roof construction consists of pairs of blades crossed at the top to ..... ~ 00

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o 10 20 FT 10 ==-::dO fEET , ...... '6eeeee!lIeaez!I.aea.t ..... I~ + FIG. 1. UPPER BENEFIELD FIG. 2. STOKE ALBANY Seventeenth century house with one room on ground floor. Two-roomed cottage dated 1746 in gable end. Ironstone Limestone rubble walls, thatched roof, dressed limestone rubble walls, thatched roof, brick copings and chimneys. coping and chimney. Original stair position Division walls are of mud and stud probably next to fireplace SMALL STONE HOUSES IN NORTHAMPTONSHIRE 149

provide a seating for the ridge piece. The blades are strengthened by the provision of one or occasionally two collar beams, and the purlins rest on the backs of the blades (see Figure 4). The cruck type which belongs to the 16th century or earlier is shown in Figure 4(a) from the house at Brigstock already mentioned. Figure 4(b) from a house at Little, Harrowden shows a development of this basic type. The blades are tenoned into short wooden projections which are buried in the side walls. The saddle at the apex has disappeared and the blades are crossed to house the ridge piece. It would seem that, in an effort to raise the level of the roof and so to provide more space in the bedrooms, the blades were lifted, but to compensate for the smaller amount of stone walling into which to anchor the blades, these timber projections were inserted. This appears to have been a 17th century development and further modifications took place in the 18th century. Figure 4( c), from a house at Stoke Albany dated 1746 shows the blades resting directly on the top of the side walls. It may be that there was some further means of attaching the foot of each blade to the wall. According -to a local resident, who saw this house being demolished, the blades were notched into a wall-plate. I noticed in a ruined 18th century house at Faxton that the foot of each blade was tenoned into a small piece of wood buried into the top of the wall to give a slightly greater purchase. This same house at Faxton, as in the one shown in Figure 4(c), had iron bolts instead of wooden pegs to attach the collar to the blades. A further 18th century development is that the close association between the collar and purlin disappears. In§tead of resting on an extension of the collar, as in the 16th and 17th century examples, the purlins now frequently rest on pegs or cleats fastened to the backs of the blades, or the blades are cut away to receive the purlins. What I have called the typical Northamptonshire roof construction with purlins resting on the backs of the blades continues in houses and -barns well into the 19th century. There are blades of this type in a barn at Moreton Pinkney with the date 1835 carved on one of them. There are, however, some roofs of the Box Frame tradition. I have noted butt purlins in roofs at Deene (1635), Deenthorpe (1660) and Rothwell (1782) and clasped purlins in roofs at Oundle (1650) and Collyweston. It may possibly be significant that all these roofs were tiled, not thatched. In this type of roof, the purlins do not rest on the backs of the blades., and there are no ridge poles (see Plates VII and VIII). So I bring to an end this description of some of the points which I have found of interest in small stone houses in Northamptonshire. This short article is not intended to be in any way definitive. Apart from the need for further work on the buildings themselves, there is also a need to discover from documentary sources, particularly probate inventories, the use to which the various rooms were put. Even more important, the social and economic conditions, of which these small houses are an important reflection, need to be further explored. But the need for recording the buildings themselves is especially urgent since so many old houses are now being cleared away. Enough at least has been said to indicate that much more work needs to be done on the smaller houses in. the County, and the interested amateur can do a good deal himself. Old property, especially if due for demolition, should be photographed from various angles, and further photographs taken if possible during the course of demolition. Plans and sections are particularly valuable, preferably to the scale of four feet to the inch, although almost any plan is better than none. 'Copies of any such record should be deposited at the County Record Office or with the National Buildings Record in London. Above all, I think that every effort should be made .to prevent the needless destruction of old property. There have recently been legislative proposals which may well enable local authorities to finance repairs to old houses, and it is also to be hoped that readers of this article will support the efforts of the Council for the Preservation of Rural England and the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings in their work of encouraging the restoration of buildings which merit preservation. M. V. J. SEABORNE. Acknowledgements · . I am indebted to Mr. D. Kilkerr for the photograph on Plate VII. I also owe much to Mr. R. W. McDowa11 and Mr. M. W. Barley for their help and encouragement. Mr. Barley has also been good enough to read this article in manuscript and to make a number of valuable suggestions. 150 NORTHAMPTONSHIRE PAST AND PRESENT

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FIG. 3. KING'S CUFFE House with three-room plan and cross-passage. Limestone rubble walls, thatched roof and dressed limestone copings and chimneys. Some of the windows have ovolo mullions

__ =-~~ __~-=~====~~ ____~====~~ ____~======*- ____~+o FEET . Ca) Brigstock Cb) Little Harrowden Cc) Stoke Albany FIG. 4. ROOFS OF THE CRUCK-FRAME TRADITION